How the Theater Community Honored Orlando at the Tonys

It was a dark day for an awards show after the news broke that a gunman opened fire on a gay nightclub in Orlando, claiming 50 lives in the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history. The Tony Awards dedicated the ceremony to the friends and families of those affected by the Orlando attack, and the show went on, but not without paying tribute to the victims of the brutal attack, onstage and behind-the-scenes.

“On behalf of the whole theater community and every person in this room, our hearts go out to all of those affected by this atrocity,” host James Corden said in a somber opening statement. “All we can say is you are not on your own right now. Your tragedy is our tragedy. Theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality, and gender is equal, is embraced, and is loved. Hate will never win. Together, we have to make sure of that.”

That the latest terror attack on American soil targeted the LGBT community was not lost on the Broadway community. “Senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day,” a tearful Lin-Manuel Miranda said in a special sonnet while accepting the Tony for Best Musical for Hamilton. “We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer.” Wearing the translucent ribbon that all Tonys attendees pinned to their outfits in honor of Orlando, he continued: “Love is love is love is love . . . cannot be killed or swept aside.”

In the press room after the ceremony, Miranda told reporters he wrote the sonnet shortly before the show. “You can’t let that moment go by,” he said. “Theater doesn’t exist without the LGBT community. It’s the cornerstone of our industry. It’s heavy in my heart today.”

Acting legend and The Father star Frank Langella also turned his acceptance speech for Best Actor in a Play into a tribute to the terror victims in Orlando: “When something bad happens we have three choices: We let it define us, we let it destroy us, or we let it strengthen us,” he said. “I urge you, Orlando, to be strong.” Backstage, Langella told reporters that he tore up his original speech shortly before the ceremony, filled with “disgust, anger, and tremendous pain . . . this constant violence and sense of madness that seems to be invading this country is terrifying.”

But even as the Orlando attack cast a shadow on the Tonys, forging ahead with the show—in an industry buoyed by the LGBT community—was a powerful message. “Tonight our joy is tinged with sorrow, but we’re here to celebrate Broadway and the beauty that artistry can bring into this world,” Barbra Streisand said. “Art can entertain us and educate us and, in times like these, console us.”

Leslie Odom, Jr., the Tony winner for Best Actor in a Musical for the role of Aaron Burr in Hamilton, said the cast found out about Orlando during rehearsals and struggled with how to go on with the Tonys. “Something like that happens and immediately all of this seems silly. We were like, ‘Maybe we should pack it up,’” he said. “And then, we had a 2:00 p.m. show and there were people in that room who spent every dime they had to be there, who had been waiting for 9 months. . . . That was refocusing. We can’t let it take that from those people. He can’t have that.”